Overview

After the battle of Antietam in 1862, Harriet Eaton traveled to Virginia from her home in Portland, Maine, to care for soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. Portland's Free Street Baptist Church, with liberal ties to abolition, established the Maine Camp Hospital Association and made the widowed Eaton its relief agent in the field. One of many Christians who believed that patriotic activism could redeem the nation, Eaton quickly learned that war was no respecter of religious principles.Doing the work of nurse and provisioner, Eaton tended wounded men and those with smallpox and diphtheria during two tours of duty. Eaton struggled with the disruptions of transience, scarcely sleeping in the same place twice, but found the politics of daily toil even more challenging. Conflict between Eaton and coworker Isabella Fogg erupted almost immediately over issues of propriety. Though Eaton praised some of the surgeons with whom she worked, she labeled others charlatans whose neglect had deadly implications for the rank and file. If she saw villainy, she also saw opportunities to convert soldiers and developed an intense spiritual connection with a private, which appears to have led to a postwar liaison.Published here for the first time, the uncensored nursing diary is a rarity among medical accounts of the war, showing Eaton to be an astute observer of human nature and not as straight-laced as we might have thought. This edition includes an extensive introduction by the editor, transcriptions of relevant letters and newspaper articles, and a comprehensive biographical dictionary of the people mentioned in the diary.

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9780195392685

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<br> Jane Schultz is arguably the nation's leading expert on Civil War nursing, whose articles and book, Women at the Front, have had a profound effect on how scholars-including literary critics and historians-have viewed women's contributions to the [American] Civil War. First-person accounts of northern women nurses (and of northern women in general) during the Civil War remain rare-and so it is a pleasure to see that Schultz has produced this carefully edited and beautifully written volume documenting Harriet Eaton's nursing. This is a great discovery and a significant contribution to Civil War literature. -Alice Fahs, UC Irvine <br> Jane E. Schultz's meticulous editing of Harriet Eaton's diary and newspaper correspondence provides detailed insights into the backbreaking day-to-day hospital work of a 'roving' Civil War nurse. Eaton's 'sanitary labor' immersed the pious Christian into the world of rickety ambulance wagons and filthy field hospital tents as she cared for Maine'st

<br> Jane Schultz is arguably the nation's leading expert on Civil War nursing, whose articles and book, Women at the Front, have had a profound effect on how scholars-including literary critics and historians-have viewed women's contributions to the [American] Civil War. First-person accounts of northern women nurses (and of northern women in general) during the Civil War remain rare-and so it is a pleasure to see that Schultz has produced this carefully edited and beautifully written volume documenting Harriet Eaton's nursing. This is a great discovery and a significant contribution to Civil War literature. -Alice Fahs, UC Irvine <br> Jane E. Schultz's meticulous editing of Harriet Eaton's diary and newspaper correspondence provides detailed insights into the backbreaking day-to-day hospital work of a 'roving' Civil War nurse. Eaton's 'sanitary labor' immersed the pious Christian into the world of rickety ambulance wagons and filthy field hospital tents as she cared for Maine'sh

Author Information

Jane E. Schultz is Professor of English and Director of Literature at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis where she teaches courses in nineteenth-century literature and culture and in the medical humanities. Her book Women at the Front: Female Hospital Workers in Civil War America received Honorable Mention for the 2005 Lincoln Prize.

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